On 2024-09-09 13:38, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
Apple is notorious for deprecating support quickly in an effort to drive hardware sales.
Sure, but people who run macOS releases before macOS 12 (the oldest Apple still supports) are kinda on their own no matter what we do. Although Gnulib still contains some code for pre-12 macOS, that code is rarely tested and I wouldn't trust it, just as I wouldn't trust Gnulib code written for systems so old that the code is no longer tested.
The market determines what support is needed
The GNU project relies mostly on volunteer effort and is not a market in the usual sense. We try to direct volunteers to areas where their work will be most helpful to the project. Supporting ancient macOS or MS-Windows versions is generally low the priority list.
There are some exceptions. In a few cases (e.g., Emacs) volunteers take the extra effort to test and support old MS-DOS versions, or VMS, or whatever. As long as that doesn't significantly hamper the main project goals, that's a good thing.
some products have technical reasons to remain fixed on an older version, like some medical equipment
Ancient medical equipment should not, not, *not* install new versions of Emacs!
